Daniel F. Harrington: How we fell in love with a car as American as all hell’

Tuesday

May 6, 2014 at 12:01 AM

Fifty years ago this month, a truck driver in Seattle plowed his cement mixer through the front of a car dealership, destroying everything in his path. He was distracted. Moments before the crash his eye...

By Daniel F. Harrington

Fifty years ago this month, a truck driver in Seattle plowed his cement mixer through the front of a car dealership, destroying everything in his path. He was distracted. Moments before the crash his eye caught a glimpse of the brand new 1964 Ford Mustang sitting on the showroom floor. Once his eye landed on the gorgeous car he literally couldn’t look away.

He wasn’t alone. In fact, the Mustang, like the Beatles a few weeks earlier, had caught the undivided attention of the entire country.

In Chicago, one dealer had to lock his showroom doors because so many people had gathered there that he feared for their safety. In Pittsburgh, a dealer left a Mustang on an elevated wash rack all day because the crowd around it never thinned. In Texas, a dealer had 15 customers bidding on a single Mustang. The winning bidder then spent the night in the car fearing his check wouldn’t clear. In Alabama, 9,000 stock car race fans jumped the wall and surrounded a Mustang pace car, delaying the race for over an hour.

One enterprising bakery owner even placed a sign in his window that read: Hotcakes selling like Mustangs!

It all began three years earlier when Ford general manager Lee Iacocca assembled a team to produce an exciting car for a youthful yet powerful new market, the Baby Boomers. “The car was peculiar,” one team member said, “It excited everybody who worked on it.”

And work they did.

They researched everything, even combing through 6,000 names before choosing “Mustang” because it was “as American as all hell” and easy to spell. It was also fun to say. (Go ahead, say it!) Henry Ford II, father of the Edsel flop, wanted to name the car “T-bird II.” Ah, bosses.

Iacocca’s staff brought in 52 couples to look over the car, estimate its price and gauge interest. The initial results were disappointing. “Too expensive, too small, and too sporty,” they concluded. But then something fascinating happened. When told that the final price of the car would actually be under $2,500 (30 percent less than they thought) every single couple changed their opinions and expressed an immediate interest in owning one! Thus a tag line was born: “Presenting the unexpected ... new Ford Mustang $2,368.”

Four million people visited Ford showrooms during the car’s first weekend and 22,000 orders were taken. Within only four months, over 100,000 Mustangs were sold. Women bought the car in record numbers. Even the kids got in on the action: 900,000 pedal-powered Mustangs fell from Santa’s sleigh that year. Iacocca, now dubbed the father of the Mustang, appeared on the cover of both Time and Newsweek.

And yes, the car really was beautiful; there were angels in the details. The long graceful hood, the short, tailored rear deck, the magnificently simple, three-element tail lights. And then there was the grill: wide open and aggressive, proudly displaying a huge, yet stunning, sculpted chrome pony. An instant icon.

Even today, the original Mustang still looks fresh.

The original advertising campaign, however, hasn’t aged so well. “Six and the single girl” went one ad, showing a young lady sitting on the Ford — presumably a six-cylinder model. “Life was just one diaper after another until Sarah got her new Mustang,” went another ad, revealing, perhaps, Madison Avenue’s thoughts on motherhood as well as the Mustang. Men weren’t immune. “Mustang put the wolf back into Wolfgang,” went yet another, featuring a reborn nerd standing by his “Stang.”

Of course, these same baby boomers are still being targeted today, only now the spots contain phrases such as “Ask your doctor if your heart is strong enough for ...” But the Mustang will always be theirs. Consider: It was the first time a car was successfully created for a target market and not the other way around.

For many of us, the automobile will always represent the American dream on wheels.

And 50 years ago, the most exciting automobile ever produced was unleashed on an unsuspecting public and a love affair began. So remember: The next time you see an original Mustang in the flesh, take note of how long your eye spends darting across its pretty lines, and see if it doesn’t cause you to smile just a little before you reluctantly turn away.

Daniel F. Harrington (danielfharrington@yahoo.com), a monthly contributor, is president of Chartwell Investment Services, in Rumford.

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